Edinburgh firm labelled 'most dangerous oil company after BP'

Greenpeace have singled out Edinburgh-based petroleum company Cairn Energy as posing the greatest threat to the environment of any deepwater offshore oil exploration firm, raising the prospect of further disruptive protests following those seen on the RBS Day of Action in August.

Senior Climate Campaigner at Greenpeace, Ben Aycliffe told The Journal that, after BP, “Cairn were the clearest company to which people’s attention should be drawn to” in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Cairn Energy made headlines on 31 August when four Greenpeace campaigners penetrated a Danish naval security cordon to place four protesters on the Stena Forth rig off the west coast of Greenland, forcing it to suspend exploratory drilling for forty hours.

The four protesters, whose protest saw them suspended from the underside of the rig on a tent-like platform, were later detained by Greenlandic police and deported, and could still face fines of up to twenty thousand Danish kronor.

Speaking to The Journal, Greenpeace placed Cairn’s activities in the Arctic at the head of its ‘top 10’ most dangerous oil exploration activities, characterising the company’s work as “extremely reckless”.

Mr Aycliffe said: “Cairn Energy is a wildcat company scraping for the last remaining drops of oil, with no track record of working in what is an incredibly dangerous environment.

“The company operates at the extreme end of an extreme industry.”

Cairn, whose group headquarters are on Lothian Road, has grown to become Europe’s largest independent petroleum company within the space of just ten years, with a market capitalisation of £3.5 billion. 

The company’s success is largely due to its dominance in another area of huge potential oil wealth, the Indian region of Rajasthan, where untapped reserves of up to 1.1 billion barrels of crude oil were discovered in 2004. Cairn entered the industry by purchasing Shell’s entire Indian subsidiary outright for just US $7.25 million in 2002.

Cairn was also the subject of protests during the 23 August Climate Camp ‘Day of Action’ when protestors from a variety of campaign groups targeted the company’s headquarters to highlight the £117 million of capital provided by RBS to fund its activities.

Masked protestors left a giant ‘piggy bank’ at the door of building housing Cairn’s offices, which leaked a simulated ‘oil slick’ of treacle over the entrance. Protests across the city that day led to several arrests.

Mr Aycliffe refused to rule out further action in Edinburgh targeting Cairn, saying on that Greenpeace’s ‘Go Beyond Oil’ campaign tour, based on the vessel Esperanza from which the oilrig protest was launched, would continue.

“You can make of that what you will,” he told The Journal.

Mr Aycliffe also alleges that Cairn refused to release their spill prevention report, ignoring all requests from Greenpeace to do so. “We’re not even sure they have one,” he said.

Cairn Energy’s environmental record beyond its Greenland activities has also been scrutinised recently. In August, a flood at the site of its Managala Petroleum Processing Terminal in India caused by the monsoon rains affecting much of South Asia resulted in a run-off of pollutants, affecting adjacent farmland and destroying crops.

A representative from Cairn Energy told The Journal: “Cairn fully respects the rights of everybody to voice their opinions and accepts that different parties have differing views.

However, a in a statement Cairn told the Journal that a "full oil spill response plan has been developed in consultation with the Greenland Authorities and following the tragic incidents in the Gulf of Mexico was reviewed and capabilities increased," adding that the plan included sensitive data such as telephone numbers, "release of which could detrimentally affect our ability to provide an effective response."

“Cairn has worked with regulators throughout the last three years to minimise the risks associated with its conventional drilling campaign, putting procedures in place which put the highest possible priority on safety and environmental protection.”